Conventionally, various manually-driven musical movements are proposed. These manually-driven musical movements comprise a worm gear and play music by rotating a drum with force transmitted from the worm gear to the drum when manually rotating a crank which is rotatably held on a frame. In other words, when the crank is manually rotated, a gear engaged with the worm gear rotates such that an elastic convex piece, projecting in the outer circumferential direction, simultaneously moves. Then, a ratchet, as an end plate of the drum, moves by being pushed by the elastic convex piece of the gear; as a result, the end plate and the drum rotate together. When the drum rotates, pins on the drum pluck reeds such that the reeds play music.
Also, the reeds are formed to play a given note by rotating in a given direction; therefore, it is necessary to establish the drum, which plucks the reeds, to rotate in one direction. As is in the above manually-driven musical movements, when the crank, or the worm gear, rotates in the reverse direction, the rotational force is prevented from being transmitted to the ratchet by warping the elastic convex piece of the gear. In other words, the elastic convex piece of the gear and the ratchet are a mechanism to rotate the drum in only one direction. In this mechanism, when the crank is rotated in the reverse direction, the rotational force is not transmitted to the drum, and the drum does not rotate in the reverse direction.
In order to play music with the above manually-driven musical movements, an action of engaging the pins on the drum with the reeds occurs while the drum is rotated, and an action of disengagement there between are repeated. A significantly large force is required to rotate the drum while the pins and the reeds are engaged with each other. As a result, a large force is applied to the engaging portion between the elastic convex piece of the gear and the ratchet such that a bend and a warp can be easily caused in the elastic convex piece as a member of the ratchet mechanism.
Also, due to the weak part in the force-transmission area, the rotation of the drum and the gear cannot be used as a significant source of output force for, for example, moving ornaments in a shape of animals and the like. Hence, the above manually-driven musical movements can be hardly used as a drive for a large ornament or a plurality of ornaments. Consequently, these musical movements are not desirable in appearance or in variety.
A purpose of the present invention is to provide a multi-functional musical movement which, as well as playing music, can be used as a drive wherein a plurality of actions to add visual stimuli to ornaments can be performed in a stable manner.
A further purpose is to provide a musical movement comprising a transmission mechanism, more specifically, a ratchet mechanism, which is not damaged with a large load during driving.
Another purpose is to provide a musical movement which enables swift and precise assembly of a drum and an end plate.